9 sure fire ways to increase traffic to your internet forum

These tips are for people who already have a forum, but seek to increase traffic to it.

1. Advertise your forum on a paid advertising program e.g google adwords.
   
   
2. Make lots of posts in related forums, and put a link in your signature. That way people reading your posts in those forums will click through to your site. There are lots of people who offer such services. Google for them. An example is h t t p : / / f o r u m b o o s t e r. n e t , and h t t p : / / w w w . i n b 0 x . c o m / (Remove the spaces to arrive at the link. DP will not allow me post links yet. Note that the 0 in inb0x is a 'zero' not an 'ooh' )
   
   
3. Make new posts/threads several times a day on different topics on your forum. Members like to see activity.
   
   
4. Have contests and reward people who make quality posts. Start a contest to reward people who invite others to the forum.
   
   
5. Offer your forum to other websites that do not have forums.They can include your forum as an iframe. Here is an example of how this can be done: h t t p : / / w w w . l o n g i s l a n d e x c h a n g e . c o m / f r e e _ m e s s a g e _ b o a r d . h t m l (Remove the spaces to arrive at the link. DP will not allow me post links yet)
   
   
6. Email members who have not posted in a while (especially members who make quality posts). Give them the personal touch. Send something like: "Hello *member name*. We haven't seen you in a while... "
   
   
7. Provide an incentive for people to register on your forum e.g a free ebook, free mp3, free reports etc
   
   
8. If your forum has rss, then advertise your forum's rss feeds on your site. When people sign up to your rss, they are still in contact with you, even if they dont visit your site.
   
   
9. Ensure your forum has good SEO - registering your forum sitemap with google webmaster tools helps.
   

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If you any more ideas on increasing traffic to forums or have any methods that have worked for you, I am interested in hearing them. Please share.

 

thanks for this tips.......

 

decent general advice. Thanks for the share - I am sure it will help some people out.
I actually linked to your post in another thread.
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Nice tips..thanks for sharing..

 

Good tips but these are commonly shared on DP and all it takes is a little search button to find loads more.

 

Nice tips mate! Shame you couldn't post those links and I'm too lazy right now to sort them out but will check them out later another time. Your point #8 was interesting:

If your forum has rss, then advertise your forum's rss feeds on your site. When people sign up to your rss, they are still in contact with you, even if they dont visit your site.

I wonder how many people actually use that...

 

Here are some more tips on how to start market a forum:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=998543

Thanks.

 

Thanks all guys.

@giorgioarmani: Yes I really wonder if people have tried that. On my site, google adsense for feeds is a big earner. So sticking adsense in some popular threads and advertising those feeds is one idea. The one problem is that vbulletin does not have feeds for posts in particular threads (it does have for forums though, but that just new threads). I am looking at getting someone to write a plugin/hack to do that for me though (that is, display the posts in a thread as a feed).

 

@Proximity: Thanks very much.

I am looking forward to learning about more tips on increasing forum traffic. So please do share. Many thanks.

 

Keep it up gr8 tips

 

This tip is quite good http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=9127583&postcount=26

 

with this tips you may increase your traffic, but you increase trash postings too...

 

nice one mate thanks - will probably compile a similar list too when i have time & post it here

 

Nice tips

also get allot of hot topics going at the same time to generate buzz. Seo is very important because many newbies will google a good forum to join